If this vote goes ahead I think that people in Scotland will never forget that one of Theresa May’s first priorities as PM was to promote the renewal of the morally reprehensible Trident nuclear system.

This isn’t just an ethical issue — at a time of austerity to commit to spending such enormous sums on weapons we can never use is beyond contempt — it is the worst response to a period of deep political and economic uncertainty in the UK.

This is the last thing we need when families are going hungry and the economy is crying out for investment after all of the uncertainties brought about by the EU referendum.

If the government’s motion is passed we will be committing this country to being burdened by the cost of updating an entirely useless status symbol.

But rather than shoring-up Britain’s international status, which Brexit had already damaged, renewing Trident will be seen as yet another demonstration of an all too prevalent attitude in modern Britain — that all of our problems can be solved by isolating ourselves from the rest of the world.

I believe that Scotland is a European country committed to peaceful cooperation and collective security achieved through close cooperation with our neighbours.

The capacity to wipe out Moscow at the discretion of our political leaders does nothing to protect us and I believe that history will condemn us for seeking security in such weapons. These are weapons from a dark period in our past that are likely to become obsolete as new forms of warfare and security threats emerge over the course of this century.

At the end of the day I believe that Scotland is a perfectly normal country in that we take the same view as the 184 other nations across the globe who do not look for security in nuclear weapons.

Finally I’d encourage you all to make your voices heard loud and clear: we do not want these obscene, expensive and potentially catastrophic systems to be renewed. Instead, we want the existing Trident fleet scrapped and removed from Scotland — because we are better than this